


Mayfly

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Animals, As A Young Man, Bees, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Calling, Chemistry, Childhood Friends, Drowning, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, Friendship, London, Murder, Music, Pirates, Poison, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sherlock Holmes and Experiments, Sherlock's Violin, Stars, Teen Sherlock, Wet Dream, optics, portrait of the detective, proto-John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:03:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hate everyone.</p>
<p>You don't know which of them you're in love with.</p>
<p>It was murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayfly

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [PFG.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl/works)
> 
> Constellations for [Jude.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas/pseuds/wiggleofjudas)

_Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day.—Carl Sagan_

****

England in the eighties is dull. Dull. The Jam on the pirate radio and stolen cigarettes in the garden. 

Oh you are thirteen. Thirteen. You hate everyone. You hate the jam on your toast, the English breakfast, the particular angle of the June light, the long dull summer sepia with heat.

“Sod off Mycroft,” you say. 

“As you wish.”

“You’re still here,” you say, scrape a helix of butter, discard.

“Quite rude for someone who still thought he was a pirate last summer.”

That was then.

“Let's play murder,” you say,” if you insist on staying.”

It _was_ murder, though no-one else thought so.

Idiots.

*****

_Come on boy. Come on girl._

_Succumb to the beat surrender._

*****

You like to dance.

He takes your hand, your friend. Not a dance exactly but a tear through trees, a dip, a lift, a _keep running they haven’t seen us…_

Music drifts out the windows. Apparently you’re playing.

“It wouldn’t kill you to pay attention, Mr Holmes.”

Your violin teacher, or another, might as well be.

“You might consider paying attention, Mr Holmes.”

To what, the lesson that goes on and on, Greek, ekphrasis, things you’ve already mastered; Book 18, might be interesting but not enough, no more interesting than the thistle, that  flame at the edge of the field, that small flare, catching your attention like serifs and notes and droplets of blood…

Murder.

*****

Caring, Mycroft said once, is something other people do.

_Listen to me._

He used to paint, flowers and insects. You teased him. He taught you to sketch.

There are stars in the garden and bleeding hearts, bees.

*****

You are bored.

Mayfly, you think, as one darns your lashes; it’ll be dead by sunset.

Your house is made of stone. Kitchen and hearth and rough slab of a family table.

A prison.

*****

You go to the seaside in your mind and things don’t improve.

Skies are malicious and every day’s Sunday. Holiday cottage too bright. There’s the beach and the shipwreck and the low tide and the Trio in G Minor and the molecular weight of _why._

There aren’t, there isn’t, a word for what you--

Feel.

Can’t be.

*****

Mycroft said, _think of a room. Put the things you know there._

Observe. Make a map.

It’ll serve you well, genius.

Don’t forget.

Or the east wind will take you.

(Like it did those drowned sailors, you know the ones.)

*****

It might as well.

You’ve never been worthy.

“Again,” your violin teacher says.

You put down the bow.

You channel the eyestrain and the bruised fingers of Rachmaninoff.

Because you can.

*****

Experiment: redox, rather violent.

Unsuccessful. Banished to the garden.

Experiment: murder.

He was murdered because --

There seven reasons at least.

You made a study of shoelaces, aglets.

You pinned to your wall a photograph.

A barefoot boy, hardly an accident.

No-one else sees.

*****

You slip the garden gate, find the stream, immerse yourself, hair tugged in the current like algae, a tangle of vessels.

You hold your breath, come up coughing, catch patterns on the hot sky.

You hunt fungi, find fire, tear home hair full of moss, find your bed.

*****

_You lose a lifetime thinking of it._

_And lose an era daydreaming like I do._

*****

“Sherlock you've got to eat,” mum says, brings up a tray. Cheese and biscuits, tomato soup, a scone, something green, tea, bit of omelette. All the things you will, have, eaten. 

You cough, push it aside.

“Sherlock.  Sweetheart.” Suspicious sniffs, a glance at your damp sleeve.

You don’t answer, count threads in the sky-pale duvet, tuck your face between the knobs of your knuckles.

You are a vertebrate. Yes. Her hand on your back, a loop of hair pulled straight, fingers tracing an angle, cosine.

Mum’s numbers are beautiful.

Dad calls himself an idiot and laughs. You see in his shoulders something else.

*****

Half three.

A bark and the smell of cedar, fur.

Your setter hurtles in panting, pads close and jumps up. (Been digging in the garden again, little bits of humus, iris; you'll cover it so dad won't shout, mum won't ruffle and look fond.)

Sweetheart, you hear yourself say, Red. Tongue rough on your hot face.

You feed him cheese.

You didn’t really say it. You wouldn’t.

You hate everything but --

“Come here, boy.”

His heart pounding faithful under your palm.

*****

Your next-best friend, if you have one, is short and stalwart, blue-eyed. No, your next-best friend is honey and hair, black, collar-length. Ian and Mina.

Ian puts on the radio, sings with the Clash, tells you London’s calling, says that concerto’s all right too. Mina likes the garden, rubs thyme between palms and does her maths and laughs. Quick. Knows that foxglove could kill a man.

You don't know which of them you're in love with.

He took your hand. You ran, _keep going they_ _haven’t seen us yet._

She’s horsey, dressage, crop shoved into a boot useful and sly.

On the second of June, dusk, you saw them kiss in the lane, her hand on his waist.

_Talk to me about stars._ A giggle.

*****

Answer: neither.

You’re never going to love anyone, not with this body.

You were looking at stars once and you deleted them: Cygnus and Virgo, all their binaries.

Gone. 

*****

Last summer you had a wet dream, dreamt of a black ship and the Spanish Main.

You knew her, the _Halcón Negro,_ the slice of her prow, the bowsprit, the snap of trade-ruffled sail, the beam sea, the wave, the salt-slick you woke to.

Pirates, really, Mycroft might have said, at breakfast, because of course he’d know.

“It’s all right, Sherlock,” is what he said.

“Sod off, Mycroft.”

_I know it is._

*****

Mum calls.

You don’t answer.

You’ve only smoked four times.

Mycroft does, all the time.

You play.

Dull. Dull as a finish, pewter, wax, rosin, residue left behind.

Think of London in the library. Old streets and abandoned Underground.

Carriages and great ships and the grey Thames.

Buzzing on the banks.

A great pulsing heart, and all of its crimes.

*****

The magic hour, dad calls it, tinkers, can’t catch you on film.

The sun slips, burns down.

The city hummed and the light bent, refracted, at the surface of the pool.

_Optical caustics_ , you saw written, you looked it up. 

“He didn’t live,” you say aloud, “long enough.”

*****

There are bleeding hearts in the garden. Lilies, stargazers, dead reckoning in their sepals, velvety, pollen-dusted blood…

You cough, shudder like a wet dog.

You cut yourself, an accident.

You are stung, finally, one of the bees, and you swell and you swell and you drift and you slip and what you see is yourself, taller and older, a swirl of something dark, a skip and a street and the two of you running--

“A & E,” someone says.

A slow bend, Doppler, a curtain of sound.

“No,” you say, “I like bees.”

“Run,” you say, _they haven’t seen us yet._

*****

“Might be feverish awhile,” your doctor whispers.

“He’s all right, though.” Dad.

“Yes.”

“Murdered,” you mumble, “no-one believes me.”

“Naturally.” Mycroft.

Caring, Mycroft said, is something other people do. 

He sketched you koi in a pond once.

A hand soft on your hair. Brief as a bird.

“Go to sleep, Sherlock.” Mum.

Toast and jam by the bed. 

Square of summer dusk and the green and pleasant land.

Chemical reactions pop in your head.

Little shards of flask-glass and bruise-blue eyes.

You sleep.

You sleep.

*****

_Come on boy. Come on girl._

_Succumb to the beat surrender._

*****

He takes your hand, the drowned boy. 

He takes your hand, your brother, your friend.

Turn off the light and all of England blinks, London buzzes; the great city calls out crystalline, clear as bells; no, cloudy, a cesspool, hidden underground; no a stimulant, an escape, a solution; London buzzes, strings sing, the country sleeps, the wind blows; foreign wars are fought. There are crimes. There are other gardens, smokes. Other stalwart boys, girls.

“Goodnight, Sherlock,” he says.

_Goodnight, pirate. Goodnight, redox, detective._

_There are stars, don’t forget._

_So much waiting for you you don't know._

**Author's Note:**

> ~Played fast and loose with timelines and 80's pirate radio in the UK(!)~
> 
> Lyrics from:
> 
> [The Jam, “Beat Surrender”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsTVZY1XmT0)
> 
> [The Jam “Absolute Beginners”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9glU6WzsdM&feature=kp)
> 
> [The Jam, "A Town Called Malice”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcRKDfIbx9g)
> 
> ***  
> [Maggie what have we done to England](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp5_Ul-qG0w)
> 
>  [Chopin Nocturne Op 9 No 2 in E Flat Major](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjLLqm_jj38)
> 
>  ***  
> [Mayflies of the British Isles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayflies_of_the_British_Isles)  
> [Mayfly, order ephemeroptera](http://www.earthlife.net/insects/ephemer.html)
> 
>    
> [Optical caustics](http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/current_research/hl2011-7/hl2011-7-en.html)
> 
>  
> 
>  "Inside all of us is a light, but some beacons are darker than others, and some are so dark they never realize they are a form of light at all."—Courtney Privett, Mayfly Requiem


End file.
